The Hour of the Star
This novel was really hard to read even in its brevity, and certainly left me with more questions than answers. The book was brutal, lacking any real resolution as Macabéa’s life spirals out of control. The fragmented style of the novel adds to this sense of desperation experienced by Macabéa within the novel. The presence of a narrator also adds to the novel, the narrator even openly admitting that the lack of knowledge they have about the story is troubling. The narrator doesn’t even identity Macabéa’s name until more than halfway through the novel. This novel revels in the mundane, there isn’t a particularly complex narrative and the novel lacks a clear beginning middle and end.
In a brief over-simplified summary, Macabéa is a poor young woman living in Rio. She eventually starts dating a rich guy in the city, who’s kind of an asshole and leaves her for her coworkers, Gloria. Macabéa then goes to a fortune teller who says that she will be happy and marry a rich man. After a while and more musings from the narrator, she is run over by a car (specifically a Mercedes) and the novel comes to an abrupt end. Throughout the book the narrator sprinkles in philosophical commentary, leading to an overarching feeling that the novel is more about the musings of the narrator than the perspectives of the characters. I often kind of wondered if Macabéa and the entire story was real or rather a device used to push whatever narrative is being pushed by the narrator. The narrator often talks about how she is “just existing” and considers her death to be an escape of sorts.
This novel is very provocative and really makes us think about what life is like in poverty and the idealization of western cultures. It is no accident that Macabéa is run over by a foreign built Mercedes and that the rich man the fortune teller thinks she will marry is a foreigner. Her death shows the ultimate futility of all of this, and the oppression brought on by the global financial system. Liespector makes us confront this head on, recognizing the impacts of poverty and the glass ceiling present in many countries. To leave you all with a discussion question for this week; What do you think the narrator was trying to tell us? Is there a deeper message, or is it just a bunch of disjointed philosophical ideas?
Hey Glen,
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. To answer your question, one of the main messages that I think the book is trying to convey is just the dire circumstances that can arise under poverty. However, I also think that her character is taken to such an extreme that the blame cannot all be placed on her circumstances. I mean, the girl only eats hotdogs and doesn't know what alcohol is. I find it hard to believe that hotdogs are the best food she has access to and can survive off of. Pretty much every adult should know what alcohol is, unless maybe you live in some secluded community (like the Mormon church, I guess). So in this way I also think it's a bit of a warning from Lispector about how terrible and miserable life can be if you never go out and experience it, but you might not realize it because you don't know anything else.
-Nathan Harris
"It is no accident that Macabéa is run over by a foreign built Mercedes"
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. And of course "merced" in Spanish means "mercy, grace, benevolence." This is both ironic, and perhaps in some ways also true... the car puts Macabéa out of her misery, but is also (as you point out) part of a system that ensures her misery in the first place.
I do believe there was a deeper message within this book, however reading it was such a struggle for me that I genuinely did not care for the message. I was entirely confused the whole book by the plot and by the questions posed by the narrator. Reading your blog has given me some insight that I did not have while reading the novel. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think the narrator was trying to tell us? Is there a deeper message, or is it just a bunch of disjointed philosophical ideas?
ReplyDeleteHey Glen! I think we could look at it as what did the author wanted the narrator to tell us. On that note, I don't think we will really know what the author wanted as I've heard there are many possible interpretations. My take on this would be that the author, Lispector, wanted the narrator to be Rodrigo, someone who wasn't Macabea, to show us the power of being someone just because the narrator decides we are. How in Macabea's case, if the narrator didn't narrate or control her story, she might've been just one more poor girl in Rio de Janeiro, and perhaps this related to the ending. Demonstrating the impact of telling this story, not much right? Whether she died in the book or lived, I believe maybe as she died it symbolized how after we finished reading Macabea also died in our worlds and in that case, the world itself lived carelessly without her.